Thursday, February 26, 2015

"The Enterprise Architects business value is in building success through good design. This will vary from place-to-place (project-to-project), because the IT history, context, and organizations maturity will change. In the end, it is about improving an organizations return on IT investments through broad and intelligent information system design and proven architectural practices."

Ask the recipient(s) of the pitch to go for coffee...

BING - door slides open, pitch ends...

So what do I mean by those above three sentences?

Business value, building success, good design? - properly designed IT architecture provides a set of technologies (process, features and infrastructure) that eases (and if I may be so bold, guarantees) project success. Project success (particularly when the project is aligned with strategy) adds business value. And the value comes through; being on schedule, staying to budget, shipping reliable systems, enabling business agility and innovation, being repeatable, streamlining process, providing information for decision making.

Vary from place-to-place, history, context and maturity will change? WTF? - a good enterprise architect sees beyond the technology and recognizes that every business has a culture, and this culture is influenced, and perpetuated, by the organizations history, the context of the current architectural decision making, and the technical maturity of the organization (in particular, the senior personnel).

In the end, return on investment, broad and intelligent design, proven practices? - the enterprise architect needs to prove influence over the end product of working software and systems. If they can't show how they add value in measurable ways, and have this as traceable, people will struggle with seeing the enterprise architects value toward the IT investments. The enterprise architects work needs to been seen as working across the organization, if there are groups left out, the technical debt created by an outlier and having to bring alignment will counter the savings attained through the good architecture. The practices need to be repeatable by other architects, this shows maturity, and maturity reduces chaos.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Branding is important. It provides an external (or public) theme for endeavours; business endeavours, professional endeavours, organizational endeavours. Personal branding has become increasingly important in the networked age where the communications technology (read: Internet) reduces the barriers to promote and communicate brand, even personal brand.

I have gone through my personal branding exercise a few times in the past, and what I now find most interesting is what the feedback loop in my network sees as my brand... when I traverse the keywords/themes that myself and Google+, LinkedIn, Klout, and other social media have tagged to my respective profiles I am left with the personal branding of; Technology, Architecture, and Education. And my network brands me much stronger in the technology and architecture realms than the educational. I know this branding assessment is somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy as I have been the one who has joined the groups, followed and friended the people and organizations, blogged about subjects, added keywords, created profiles, contributed to discussions, attended events (online or otherwise), etc, etc... but there are also data analytics going into all this. So by giving a broad sweep over ALL my connections to the network and paying attention to the keywords getting bubbled to the top by the network and the related analytics should give you an idea of how the network sees you.

How my linkedin endorsers perceive me...

Am I OK with this? Absolutely!

Having a brand of; Technology, Architecture and Education? Does my data analysed network perceive the brand I would like to be perceived with? Absolutely! Most of my professional life, over the last 15 years, has focused upon enterprise and solution architecture. I am a technologist first, with proven successes in architecture. I am also an educator with experience as college and university faculty with a number of technology projects in the edtech realm, where I have increased access to education using technology innovation and solid architectural approaches.

How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand?

This is where it gets interesting. How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand? This is what I believe are the steps toward branding yourself;

What would you like to be? What is your personal brand? Create a vision for yourself.

Be that person. Even if you are not there, yet, be that person as best you can given the real world constraints.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Duplication of features is where I consider one of the easiest areas of IT architecture (enterprise or otherwise) to reduce cost and increase the business value of investments in IT and related technology architecture. In general, I take the view that architecture pays for itself (and then some) when brought into, or given greater influence toward, an organization. This post focuses on architectural duplication, the idea being that an organization has software systems or technical infrastructure that are duplicates of one another. Any piece of information technology (IT) has costs; these costs start at the decision making around acquiring (or building), and continue into implementation, and then exist over the life-cycle of the IT item. Some say the cost of maintaining software is as high as 80% over the life of a piece of software, either way maintaining software (bought or built) cost money and having duplication of systems or features increases these costs unnecessarily. I believe that any architect worth their salt, and working in a medium size organization or larger, can easily pay for their salary simply by reducing duplication and optimizing implementation to reduce licencing costs.

Identifying and reducing
What is the best way to identify duplication? Start with creating an inventory of all software and systems (yes, surprisingly not every organization does this). Make sure this inventory crosses all silos of the organization. Do the follow-up, talk with all stakeholders responsible for software, infrastructure, and related licensing. Create a spreadsheet, diagram, database, or whatever works best for you to visualize all the software, systems, etc... make sure you have a good written description of each. Be sure you can discuss the diagram in a vocabulary that each stakeholder understands. If you can get a sense of cost associated with each, get that information... reach out to the help-desk to get information of which systems require the greatest support, look into the ongoing data entry (duplicate or otherwise) costs, find out how many simultaneous users each system has, gather licensing costs. With all this information you should be able to identify duplication across the silos and within the software features. There will be duplication that can be "easily" removed or licensing schemes that can be adjusted.

Regardless of the cost in doing all this work, it will be less than the savings collected from reduced duplication and over-subscribed licensing.

-- If you want assistance with this or similar IT architecture initiatives feel free to contact me;

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Architecture or Enterprise Architecture can have a positive impact upon a business from many directions. The maturity available from architectural frameworks and processes (TOGAF, Zachman, Etc.) can assist greatly in bringing business value and increase an organizations nimbleness in aligning strategy with technology (innovation and otherwise). How you get started in improving the architecture / enterprise architecture is important. I have found that its about aligning the conversation of business value with the vocabulary found in the traditional architectural domains to make progress and technical improvement within an organization. Each organizations relationship to technology, and related processes, is different depending on its history with technology and how the technology has grown within the organization. This is a very important aspect of being successful with architecture, regardless of how mature an organization is in regards to architectural processes.

It's important to determine an organizations history and relationship to technology and architecture.

Meeting face-to-face is really important
Many technology people often defer back to emails, designing, documenting, coding, configuring, etc... and they could do well to meet stakeholders in more personal, and conversational, environments. Its about identifying the stakeholders and having the conversations. Having an understanding of each stakeholders history with technology, where they see the value, and the maturity of their technical vocabulary is the best place to get started when beginning a solution or enterprise architecture initiative. Knowing where each stakeholder sees the business value in a technology initiative is the best place to start.

When having stakeholder conversations be sure to have the EA domains and sub-domains in mind, take notes, get a good sense of each stakeholders knowledge within each domain. Where do they see the greatest value and the opportunities? As an architect to what level of technical vocabulary do you meet each stakeholder?

Now the business value can begin to be identified, using a shared vocabulary across the project, so architecture and related processes can support the strategy to build the value.

Friday, February 13, 2015

I'm putting together a couple of evenings of activities for the cub scout group I am a leader. The focus will be on the tying and use of knots. Listed here are the six we will be working on.

half-hitch - its a very basic knot, but shows up in lots of places

figure eight - Good for giving something to hang on to, or for stopping a rope from running through a pulley or cleat.

square knot - also known as a reef knot. Great for tying two lines (of the same type) together and for binding around a collection of objects or for reefing a sail.

clove-hitch - a good knot for lashing things down or tying to a round post. I good adjustable knot.

bowline - is used to make a loop at one end of a rope.

sheet bend - is used to fasten tow ropes of different types together.

Can you identify five of the six knots described above?

I am planning on having these activities over two evenings. The first evening will be an introduction to the basic knots (half-hitch, figure eight, square knot and clove hitch). Each participant will have a small section of 1" diameter wooden rod to tie their knots. The second evening will be the final two knots with a mock rescue.

Evening 1 - Demo's and knot tying basics

Demo of four knots

Break into sixes and have another leader based demo of the four knots (half-hitch, figure eight, square knot and clove hitch).

Stay in sixes, each participant tie all four knots, assist each other.

Stay in sixes, have race for who can tie knots the fastest.

Have all sixes relay race for which group can tie all the knots the fastest

Regroup as a pack, have review for what each knot is good for.

Finish with a demo of bowline and sheet bend

Evening 2 - Two last knots and simulated rescue

Review of last weeks four knots

Demo of two last knots (bowline and sheet bend)

Break into sixes and have another leader based demo of the two knots (bowline and sheet bend)

License Scheme

Disclaimer

All views expressed on this site are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. They are views created by my many years as an IT professional and, more importantly, an enterprise architect responsible for building large and distributed systems.